


there's no race, there's only a runner

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Author wishes she could tag this as crack, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Pokemon - Freeform, Rivalry, sixth-life crises?, teenagers having quarter-life crises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 12:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17386163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: "You're saying a confused duck is better at life than you are.""Basically."





	there's no race, there's only a runner

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bubble-wrap-me-blog on tumblr who prompted "Pynch - I don't want to fight with you anymore."
> 
> I'll be honest: I kept stalling out while tackling this prompt, because I felt like I've written it before, and I didn't know how to do something different with it.
> 
> And then I decided to, uh. Do something very different with it.
> 
> ...in my defense, I was playing a lot of Let's Go Eevee at the time.

The last thing Adam wants is for someone to see him get knocked on his ass by a Water Gun attack in the middle of a training session, so of course when he pulls the towel away from his eyes, there's Blue Sargent in a swimsuit and a smirk.

"That's one way to stay cool," she says. "Of course, the ocean's ten feet away, most people would rather go for a swim -- "

"Nice to see you too." Adam glances down at Psyduck to check that he isn't going to pull any more tricks. He has an intense look of concentration on his face, but that could mean anything. "I didn't think the beach was your kind of hunting ground."

"A girl can't take a vacation?" She does have an enormous beach tote under one arm, which she drops to the ground. "You should try taking a day off sometime. Maybe then your Pokemon wouldn't turn on you."

Adam sighs. "He's not mine, he's one of Persephone's projects."

"Oh!" Blue's smile changes into something genuine. She crouches down to get on eye level with the Psyduck. "I guess that makes us sort of family."

"I wouldn't -- " _get so close,_ but before Adam can even say that much Blue's face goes lax, her mouth falling open and her eyes drifting vaguely crossed. "Dammit."

"So this project is a _project_ project," Blue says, after Adam has given her something to cure her Confusion.

"What other kind of project is there?"

"I figured Persephone was just throwing psychic Pokemon at you until you gave in and joined the gym."

"I'm not joining a gym," Adam says. Blue looks deliberately unconvinced, even though he's said this before. "I mean it. I think I'm...tired."

Blue doesn't respond right away, like she thinks he's got something more to say. "You want to expand on that a little? Tired of what?"

"I'm tired of everything."

Blue sighs. "You want to contract that a little?"

"I'm tired of fighting." He hasn't said that before, at least not out loud. "I'm tired of asking other creatures to fight." 

"You don't have to stick with a career that you chose when you were _ten._ " Blue picks up a piece of drift wood and swings it a few times like a bat. Psyduck tilts his head and watches in amazement. Adam wonders if it's possible for Pokemon to get stoned; Psyduck is starting to remind him of Cheng after some of his "special" Beedrill honey.

"Right. It's not like that's what I spent years getting good at."

"So? Get good at something else." Blue chucks the driftwood. Psyduck waddles after it. "What do you _want_ to do?"

"I should be able to answer that," Adam says. "I don't know. How do people decide what they want?"

"You don't _decide_ to want something. Wanting just happens." She stares contemplatively across the beach, to where Psyduck has fallen flat on his face with his bill stuck in the sand. Adam should probably do something about that. "You wanted to beat the Elite Four, right? You don't get that far on accident."

Adam shrugs. He can't say _I had to prove I was good enough._ He definitely can't say _I haven't done it yet._

"Isn't there something burning inside you?"

" _Burning inside me?_ " Adam repeats incredulously.

"Shut up. See if I help you anymore."

"That was supposed to help?"

"If you're just going to make fun of me you can leave," Blue says. "Go cry to Gansey about your inner turmoil. He'd love to have some help digging up fossils."

Psyduck flails so hard that he ends up back on his feet, the stick improbably balanced on his bill.

"I don't think I have a desire _burning inside me_ to die of boredom in a cave," Adam says.

"If you keep mocking me I'll decide you have a burning desire to meet my newest Machamp."

Adam grins, because it's always amused him that instead of following in her mother's footsteps Blue specializes in Fighting- and Ground-type Pokemon, the more enormous the better. _She_ probably never wasted a second asking what she wanted.

Psyduck waddles back over to them and stops proudly in front of Blue.

"Your duck thinks he's a dog," she tells Adam even as she takes the stick and throws it again.

"Maybe playing fetch is what he has a burning desire to do."

"You're saying a confused duck is better at life than you are."

"Basically."

"Ugh, you're a real downer sometimes." She flops down on the sand, hypocritically dramatic. "Just quit. The worst thing that could happen is you make your rival really sad."

"For crying out loud." It's hard to effectively glare at someone while you're sitting on a beach towel with sand between your toes, but Adam does his best. "He's not my rival."

"He's pretty sure he is."

"You can't just _decide_ you're someone's rival. That's not how it works. He's just a guy from the same town as me who started training at roughly the same time I did."

Blue _hm_ s. "I don't know, you get pretty annoyed with him. That sounds like a rivalry to me."

"It _isn't_ ," and then he shakes his head because there's no use getting into it. He's had about as much of Blue's pragmatic, unsympathetic attitude as he can take in one sitting. "Come on, let's see if we can teach Psyduck to play dead."

They hang around the beach until sunset, when Psyduck manages to Confuse both of them at once. It's twenty minutes of wandering around running into rocks and Blue's Onix and each other before either of them has the mental wherewithal to access their healing items, at which point Adam is ready to throw in the towel.

"I'm on my way to Saffron Town," Adam says, "if you want me to take anything home for you."

She does, so he walks her back to her campsite. She hands him an envelope for Calla, a package for her mom. "I don't have anything for Persephone, so pretend I sent you."

"I'm not a good present."

" _Fine_." Blue sounds about as done with his bullshit as he is. "Give her a kiss for me." She kisses him on the cheek, although she has to hop up and put her weight on his shoulder to do it.

"Ow." Adam rubs his cheek. "I think you bit me."

"Your fault for being so tall."

"You know I'm not going to kiss your aunt, right? That's weird."

"Just go away already," but she walks him down the trail and back to the main road.

He's just turning to say goodbye when somewhere down the road --

"Parrish!"

Adam freezes.

"See, that." Blue sounds pensive, which is somehow worse than if she were bragging. "That's the face of a guy whose rival just showed up."

Adam tries to stop his face from doing -- whatever it's doing to make Blue say that -- and turns around to face Ronan.

-

The first time that Ronan and Adam dueled, Ronan almost -- should have -- won.

Ronan had a Charmander and a gym badge and a bag full of power ups. Adam was just a dumb kid who stumbled over an injured Bulbasaur while he was hiding in the woods. He'd _carried_ her all the way to the Pokemon Center, because it didn't occur to him to catch her, because he didn't have any Pokeballs anyway.

And then he'd left the center and Bulbasaur had followed him, everywhere he went, so he'd owed it to her to go somewhere better than home.

They'd just reached the outskirts of the next town over when a kid jumped off a ledge into the road in front of them, startled Adam, _laughed_ about startling him, and challenged him to his first actual fight. All before Adam could process the thought that, right, being a Pokemon trainer meant asking another living creature to get beaten up for him.

He's still not sure how the hell they pulled off that victory, except that Bulbasaur was too stubborn to faint, except that Ronan's face was so smug that Adam refused to lose.

And he hadn't. He'd _won_ , but Ronan still looked smug, said "you got lucky" even as he tossed a small fortune at Adam's head.

Maybe everything would have been different if he lost. Maybe then Ronan wouldn't have spent the next several years challenging him to duel after duel after duel, rude and loud and refusing to just leave him alone.

Or maybe it wouldn't have mattered. They were the same age, they started from the same town, they were heading for the same distant goal: They would have run into each other, even without Ronan deciding they were rivals. Adam hadn't even minded it, after a while. Ronan was good competition, once he got used to the bluntness and the name-calling. He was fierce and strong and completely unpredictable, and Adam came away from every match with his heart pounding and his whole body buzzing with victory.

It was almost a letdown, beating the Elite Four, for all that Adam had spent months training for it, for all that that was the benchmark for excellence. It had rung hollow -- until Adam found Ronan outside the Indigo Plateau, waiting for him.

 _That_ was a challenge. That was the most challenging fight of Adam's whole life. So much so that he realized, _hang on, I'm not going to win this time,_ and he looked up and saw Ronan realize it at the same exact second.

And then Ronan threw the match.

-

He figured Ronan was done with him, after that, but less than a month later Ronan found him kicking around Saffron Town.

He had two choices, tell Ronan to go to hell, or go at it with everything he had; it wasn't ever a question which he would choose.

Adam started off with Venusaur, his truest companion. For his starter, Ronan chose -- a Pidgey.

Adam thought it had to be a trick of some kind, even after Venusaur took it out in one shot, even after Ronan's second Pokemon turned out to be another Pidgey. It wasn't until the end of the shortest battle he'd ever fought that Adam realized that Ronan had tracked him down with a team of _nothing but Pidgeys,_ no trick, no strategy, no super strong Pokemon, just an anemic flock of mundane birds.

Every challenge since, Ronan has some new useless team: Pidgey and Rattata and Magikarp. Kakuna and Metapod with zero offensive skills. A team of nothing but Ditto, and how long had he spent hunting for _six Ditto_ just to annoy Adam?

He builds one joke team after another and sends them at Adam and smirks the whole time.

Adam is tired of being laughed at.

-

Ronan approaches at a saunter, gets a step too close before he stops. "You ready to go, Parrish?"

Adam has a raging headache and he hasn't made any progress training Persephone's Psyduck and he doesn't know what he wants, but it's not to find out how Ronan plans on taunting him this time.

He steps out of the road, leaving the way clear for Ronan to keep walking. "I'm not doing this."

"Why not?" and there's that smirk already. "Scared?"

A flash of anger: because Ronan knows that Adam knows there's no reason to be afraid. Anger again: because Ronan is making Adam mad on purpose. And anger again: because can't he _stop himself_ from getting mad, even knowing Ronan is doing it on purpose -- and that's the end of it. Lightning can strike the same place three times, but there won't be anything left but ash afterward. Adam feels angry and angry and angry, and then he feels nothing.

"You're not worth my time, Lynch."

Something Adam can't identity flicks across Ronan's face. Whatever it was, it's gone as fast as it came.

"I'm not, huh?" One hand comes up; for a long, strange second, Adam thinks Ronan is going to touch his face. Instead he flips Adam off, which makes a lot more sense. "So long, Parrish."

Adam watches Ronan's back as he walks away, until he's passed entirely out of sight.

Blue says, like she's observing the weather, "that was cold."

"He's been mocking me for years," Adam says. "I'm not the cold one."

Blue doesn't look convinced. If anything, she looks worried. Which means it's past time for Adam to go.

He thinks about not heading for Saffron Town after all, or losing her packages on the way, but that's hardly going to prove that he's not _cold_. Anyway, her mom would _know_. Freaking Psychic types.

-

Adam leaves Blue's packages with her cousin and skulks around the gym, trying to avoid attention. Maura and Calla have all of Blue's most terrifying traits, only turned up to eleven. He's going to have a hard enough conversation with Persephone without going through them first.

He's lucky enough to find her alone, although not exactly available. She's flipping through five books at once and doesn't take her nose out of them even after she's acknowledge him.

He places the Pokeball, a little spitefully, on the book she's currently peering at.

"I came to give this back to you," he says. "I can't help him."

She places the Pokeball in a pocket and flips to the next page. "Well, there's no shortage of rescues. We'll find one that's a better fit."

"I don't think I'm a good fit for any of these," but she's gotten up and gone poking around in the next room. He has to follow after her and raise his voice, neither of which helps with the aura of _solemn and dignified defeat_ that he's trying to project.

"Of course you are, I'm never that wrong." She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a Pokeball -- presumably a different one -- considers it, and puts it back.

"Look, I think it's great what you do. Saving abused Pokemon. But I can't do that."

"No, you can't."

Adam wonders if Psyduck somehow gave him one last bout of Confusion as a parting gift. "What?"

"No creature can save another one. Or destroy them. Only the self can accomplish that."

"Then...what's the point?"

Persephone actually pauses to think about that before she answers. It's alarming. Persephone doesn't ever have to _think up_ answers, she just knows them already. "Hard to say. Maybe there isn't one."

"I have to apologize to Blue," Adam says. "Her life advice was a lot less confusing."

"Hm." Persephone reaches up high for a box on a shelf just out of her reach. Adam steps in and grabs it for her. "If I wanted to give you advice I'd probably say something like, your independence has ceased being a virtue and has become a liability, and if you don't invest in something outside of yourself you're going to end up isolated and miserable."

Adam stares at her.

"But I'm not giving you advice, I'm giving you this." She pulls out a Pokeball out of the box and casts out an Abra. "Don't come back anytime soon."

Adam takes the Abra and leaves. There is no obvious alternative.

"Now what the hell do I do?" he asks.

Abra turns to face him, waits a beat, and then disappears.

"Son of a -- "

-

"He won't have gone far," Persephone tells him, when he heads back into the gym with his tail tucked between his legs, ruining whatever kind of dramatic exit he might have accomplished. "You're better off looking for him. Forcing him back to his ball won't help you build any trust."

"I don't want him to trust me," but Persephone just shoos him off again.

It takes most of an hour for Adam to find Abra, who takes one look at him and vanishes again.

The only good thing Adam can say for the rest of the day is that at least Abra doesn't know Confusion.

-

After weeks of one-sided hide-and-go-seek, Adam can generally get the skittish Pokemon to tolerate his presence.

That leaves him with the question of how he's supposed to _help_. Or what he's supposed to do other than helping, given how cryptic Persephone's guidance was. So far he hasn't had any better idea than to have Abra spend a lot of time with Venusaur, reassuring him, or maybe just talking shit about Adam, who can tell, while Adam tries not to make any loud noises or sudden movements or think anything unpleasant.

The whole process keeps him busy, and frustrated, and tired, so he doesn't realize for quite some time that he hasn't run into Ronan even once.

It could just be coincidence, but -- at their level, the world is pretty small. He's traveling along minor roads for the most part, the better to avoid spooking Abra. Even so, he runs into Noah, Cheng, Blue, half a dozen other trainers he knows from gyms and tournaments. They all have trite unhelpful suggestions for how to train Abra, except Blue, who just laughs at him.

There's no sign of Ronan anywhere.

Once he's noticed it he can't ignore it. He waits, and waits, until it builds up into a sick uneasy feeling in his stomach. He can't forget Blue's voice when she told him he'd been cold. He _hadn't_ been. But Ronan probably took it that way. It probably feeds into his stupid rivalry narrative. He's off plotting something to get back at Adam, and it's going to be worse the more time he has to plot it, and _that's_ the reason that Adam decides to go find him.

He visits the gyms, all of Ronan's old favorites, Fire and Poison and Fighting, but everyone tells him that Ronan hasn't been around.

He crashes Gansey's latest fossil quest, because Gansey gets on with Ronan better than anyone Adam knows. After ten minutes of breathing in rock dust and being careful not to touch -- anything -- Adam is sick of it and figures Ronan would be, too, even though Gansey says Ronan could show up any day now and aren't Kabuto _fascinating?_

He even stops by Ronan's family's house, stalking carefully through a hometown he hasn't been to in years, only to find that Ronan's not there, either. One of his brothers is, lounging on a singed couch with a pile of adorable Vulpix and Pikachu who are clearly not house-trained.

"Oh, yeah, Ronan came by a while ago."

"When?"

"Hm." Matthew thinks. Electricity sparks along the carpet toward them. Adam steps onto the brick hearth in front of the fire place. Matthew does not. "Ouch! Sorry, what was the question?"

"When was the last time Ronan was here?"

"Oh, I don't know, a while ago. Maybe a couple of months. He picked up some gear and left again. He didn't even want to crash for the night, can you believe that?"

Adam believes it. Adam doesn't even want to be standing in this room. "Gear for what?"

"He was going somewhere cold. A mountain? Or maybe a cave," and then something catches fire in the next room and Matthew gets distracted, calling for a Squirtle. Adam escapes before he can say goodbye or perish in a house fire.

-

Adam gives up. He really does. He's tried and tried and failed, and if Ronan wants to hide on some mountain sulking that's his business. Adam is going to Fly somewhere warm and forget the whole thing. He pulls out his map and starts brainstorming a destination with a minimum of Abra-sized hiding places.

And then he sighs and starts tracing out routes to all of the coldest places he can think of.

It's three mountains and two caves before he finds Ronan deep in a godforsaken pit under the Seafoam Islands.

" _There_ you are." At least caves have good acoustics. It helps the sound of his irritation carry. 

Ronan stares at him with some unreadable expression on his face. His back goes straight and stiff, like he's trying to remind Adam that he's had the height advantage between them for years, but other than that he stands frozen in place like all the patches of ice Adam keeps almost slipping on.

"What are you even _doing_ \-- "

Ronan scrambles into motion. Specifically, he tackles Adam and covers his mouth with a gloved hand.

"Shut _up_ ," he hisses, his mouth an inch away from Adam's ear. "It'll _hear you_."

Adam pulls Ronan's hand off his mouth. It would serve Ronan right if he shouted, but he drops his voice to a whisper. He's the mature one, here. "What will hear me?"

Ronan doesn't answer. His face is no more readable for the fact that it's so close to Adam's.

If Ronan wants to beat Adam at something, he shouldn't pick _stubbornness_. Adam stares back at him and waits.

Ronan pulls his hand out of Adam's grasp. "Come on."

They scramble through the caves for at least another hour without Adam getting any more idea of what they're looking for. He wonders, as Ronan leads him across a narrow icy ledge, if this is the revenge; if they aren't going anywhere at all, and Ronan's just leading him on a wild goose chase until he slips and breaks his neck, or worse, gives up.

But Ronan moves like he knows where he's going, no hesitation, and he doesn't go anywhere that Adam can't follow, so Adam stays close and takes every risk Ronan does.

Eventually Ronan stops, drops to a crouch near a hole in the cave floor. Adam can't see what's below -- there's mist coming up through the hole, thick as fog -- but he can hear the sound of rushing water.

"You've got to be joking."

Ronan grins at him. "What, are you scared of a little water?"

Before he can answer with any of the _many, valid_ reasons that this is stupid and dangerous, Ronan jumps.

Adam shuts his eyes. Entertains the idea of _not_ doing this.

"Dammit," he mutters, and then he jumps.

He's already got his hand on his belt, but he waits until he can actually _see_ the water before he tosses out a Pokeball. Lapras hits the water a second before he lands on her back. She looks back at him reproachfully.

"Sorry." He rubs her neck, which soothes her for the moment. He'll need to make it up to her later, but it was worth it. Half of him is splashed with freezing cold water, but the rest of him is dry, and more importantly, he didn't get swept along by the current and dashed into rocks.

He sits bolt upright and scans the water. Where -- 

Lapras spots him first and Surfs after him. Ronan's swimming across the current, heading for a strip of bare rock near the far cave wall.

Adam reaches the strip first, but not by much, and climbs off Lapras' back the same time Ronan's pulling himself and his _layers and layers_ of drenched clothing out of the water.

"Nice swimming." Ronan rubs Lapras' neck, which she stretches out, shutting her eyes and preening. "Lucky he has you so he doesn't have to do his own work, huh?"

Adam opens his mouth, _let's see how well you can swim after frostbite sets in_ , but before he can get any words out Ronan grabs him and covers his mouth again.

Adam takes his hand, _again,_ and glares at Ronan.

Ronan is not looking at Adam. He's staring upward and his eyes are enormous.

Adam turns and draws in a sharp breath.

Out of the mist emerges an impossible, incredible Pokemon. Adam can't wrap his head around how _large_ it is, because every movement it makes is light and graceful, like nothing that size should be. Even in the gloom of the cave, its feather shine, blue like the thickest parts of a glacier, like the deep untouched snowdrifts on the mountains Adam had climbed looking for Ronan.

His brain reminds him that Articuno is a _legend,_ an extinct species at best, certainly not a real living thing. And yet he's looking at it, watching it swoop low to skim over the water. It passes right by them, and Adam inhales quickly and squeezes Ronan's hand in excitement. Ronan squeezes back.

Adam spares him a glance. Ronan is watching Articuno, absorbed and happy -- no, _joyous_ , like Adam has never seen anyone look before.

Articuno curves its flight back upward, without the slightest sign of effort, and flies between two stalactites and into another cavern, out of sight.

They stand and watch the empty space for a long time anyway. They're not really waiting for it to come back; they just don't want to let the moment end.

"That's..." he starts, and trails off.

"What?" It isn't impatient, or annoyed; Ronan honestly sounds curious.

Adam shakes his head. He has no idea what he wanted to say. "How did you _find_ it?"

Ronan shrug. "Just kept looking."

Adam has a thousand questions, but when he looks back at Ronan, his lips are turning blue, and it occurs to Adam that he's soaked head to toe.

"Oh, shit, you're going to freeze to death." Adam swaps Lapras out for Abra, who can, after all, do one thing really spectacularly well, and they Teleport to the beach outside the cave.

It doesn't occur to Adam until they're back in the sunlight that they could have tried to fight Articuno, to _capture_ Articuno. He couldn't hold that thought in his head while he was looking at it. It's like thinking you could catch a mountain, or a hurricane, or -- Ronan, who's shivering and frozen and unconquered by anything, except possibly hypothermia.

It's warm on the beach, but that isn't going to make enough of a difference in wet clothes. Adam strips off his soaked pants and jacket. Ronan fumbles with his belt, but only, as it turns out, to grab a Pokeball.

"Burn some shit," Ronan says.

Charizard cocks is head, like he's deciding whether he'll bother.

"Please?" Adam adds, voice soft. He feels oddly like he's seeing an old friend after a long absence. There had been a time when he knew this Charizard nearly as well as he knew his own team.

Charizard gives him a nod before knocking a tree over with one crushing blow and setting it ablaze.

Ronan gets right up in front of the fire and drops to a squat, holding his hands over the flames. "You're going to spoil him."

"Basic manners are a luxury for you?" Adam asks. "What am I talking about, of course they are."

"Right, because you're so polite all the time."

He shouldn't be surprised that Ronan insults him. That isn't new. But he got caught up in that wondrous look on Ronan's face, and he hates to think that that joy is gone now. It makes him feel sad.

It makes him feel guilty.

Adam sits next to Ronan by the fire -- a lot closer to the fire than he'd like to be, but he can't back out at this point.

He says, "I'm sorry."

"Too bad," Ronan says, and then he frowns, like he's only now processing the words. "Sorry for what?"

"I was rude. The last time I saw you," Adam continues, when Ronan doesn't react. "Not that you weren't rude to me first -- "

"But you're supposed to be better than me? Yeah, real nice apology."

"I'm _trying,_ " but Ronan just snorts at that. "I'm so glad I spent weeks looking for you so you could blow me off, I guess I deserve that."

Adam stands, but Ronan looks up at him and Adam can't go anywhere when Ronan looks so confused.

"You were looking for me?"

"No, I ended up in a frozen cave under a volcano in the middle of the ocean _on accident_."

"Why would you do it on purpose?"

"Because -- I wanted to say I was sorry."

Ronan doesn't need to call bullshit on that; his face says it for him.

"Because," Adam says, frustration or fear or something he can't figure out making his heart pound, "you disappeared and I didn't see you anywhere and it was _weird,_ okay?"

"I thought I wasn't worth your time."

Adam's cheeks flush. He's hot, all over, and too close to the flames.

Ronan looks back at his fire, like he's done.

"I'm sick of this," Adam says. "Everything used to make sense and _you're_ the one who changed that, so don't sit there like this is my fault. Maybe we were rivals, maybe that shouldn't have meant anything, but I felt like I knew you. I actually cared about your opinion. And you made it pretty clear how little you thought of me -- "

Ronan scrambles to his feet. "That's not -- "

" _You let me win_." He wonders if Ronan is going to argue that that isn't true. He wishes Ronan would argue with him. It would almost be a relief, to be wrong.

But Ronan shuts his mouth. There is no argument. There can't be; it's true.

"You let me win and then you made damn sure there was no chance I could ever lose to you again." Adam can hear his voice getting louder, and he hates it. He tries to tamp down on it. It just makes him sound hurt, and he hates that, too. "How pathetic do you think I am that I need you to spoon feed me victories? How much of a loser do I have to be, that I'd be glad for your condescension -- "

"I never thought that," Ronan says, heated, "I never thought you were -- fuck it, I didn't want to win, okay?"

"No," Adam says. "No, that's not _okay._ What is the point of this _stupid_ rivalry if you don't even want to win?"

"None, all right? There's no point, it's all just stupid. I was a stupid kid and I just wanted to burn shit and get into trouble and then _you_ came along and you were the best thing I'd ever seen." He turns away, back to the fire, but not before Adam spots the blotches of uneven color spreading across his face. "I thought about fighting you all the time because I thought about _you_ all the time, except I was too fucking stupid to realize that if I ever beat you then it'd be _over_. There wouldn't be any reason to keep looking for you. We wouldn't be rivals. We wouldn't be anything."

Adam is feeling too many things he can't identify; like something moving through the fog, indistinct, no way to tell what it is except that it's enormous. "You didn't think I'd want a rematch?"

Ronan brushes a fist against his mouth. "You never even liked fighting. You were going to give it up eventually."

He needs to breathe in. It takes him a few tries. "You never said anything."

"By the time I figured it out you were already pissed at me." Ronan shrugs. "I just wanted to keep things the same as long as I could."

"I don't want things to stay the same."

Ronan's head bows and his shoulders tighten, like he's preparing for some arduous, endless task.

"I hate how things are," Adam says. "I hate fighting, and I hate this stupid rivalry, and I _hated_ it when you disappeared." Ronan whips around to face him, and if Adam considers the expression on his face he's not going to be able to keep going. "I hate it, it's not fair, you keep wandering off and I have to watch you go and then just wait until you feel like coming back to me."

"Adam -- "

Adam steps into Ronan's space, too close, and kisses him.

Ronan kisses back, over and over again, a choppy clumsy coming together, falling apart, coming together. Adam's shaking. He's terrified he'll screw this up. But he's also terrified of what happens when this is over, so all things being equal he chooses this, the brush of Ronan's lips and the bump of their noses hitting and the sound of Ronan's breath, so close to him, intertwined with his breath.

Hands come up to frame Adam's face. They are _the coldest things in the entire world,_ and he draws in a breath, fast, to complain about that fact.

Except when his lips part Ronan's do, too. His mouth is open against Adam's and it is warm and wet and immediately more important than everything else.

Adam slides his tongue into Ronan's mouth, slides his body closer to Ronan, feels Ronan shiver at his touch. He brings his hands up to Ronan's sides, and Ronan shivers again, and -- oh, wait, that's not about Adam, is it.

Adam breaks off the kiss, but Ronan's still holding him, so he can't go anywhere. He rests his forehead against Ronan's while he catches his breath. "Ronan, you're freezing."

"Don't care," he mutters, pressing his lips against Adam's cheek.

"I care." Adam pulls away. Ronan looks mutinous. "Come on, I'll warm you up," and that gets him on board.

Ronan has more gear stashed in a tent up the beach, which makes Adam feel slightly better about his survival instincts. He digs through the gear while Ronan strips off his sodden clothing.

"You could have taken your boots and parka off before you jumped," Adam says. "If you're really opposed to wearing a wet suit."

"I wasn't planning on swimming." Ronan grabs a handful of bedding from Adam and drops it right by the fire. The blankets are going to be full of sand, but if he doesn't care, Adam doesn't care. "I was gonna use Surf, I'm not an idiot."

Adam sits in the nest of blankets and tugs Ronan down. "That would more convincing if you'd actually used Surf."

Ronan squirms. He's sitting in front of Adam, so he can't see his face, but his voice is muted. "I wanted to see if you'd follow me. I thought I could ditch you."

"Good luck with that." Adam wraps his arms around Ronan from behind, trying to share his body heat, trying to tug the blankets up and around Ronan without actually letting go of him.

Ronan turns his head to look at Adam out of the corner of his eye. He's smiling in a small, real way that radiates warmth back at Adam.

Adam lowers his eyes and rests his lips on Ronan's ear.

"You know." The words come out muffled. He tilts his head, just an inch. He doesn't want them to miss each other any more than they already have. "Articuno's just supposed to be a legend. But if it's real...there's other legends. If we can find one, maybe we can find more."

Ronan runs his freezing hands over Adam's warm ones. "You want to wander around the world looking for things that might not exist."

Is this what it is to want something? It does feel like it's burning him.

Adam breathes.

"Yeah," he says. "I want to."

Ronan says, "that could take us a long time."

Adam shuts his eyes. "Good."

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a billion years since I watched the anime so if I screwed up some world-building detail, oops and also I don't care.
> 
> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/181936773780/hey-you-could-you-please-do-number-24-pynch-3).


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